Transcription

by Ike Hamill

  Bo sat down carefully, so as to not disturb Chloe. He blew on his coffee and took a tiny sip.

  James took a gulp of his and then set it down on the table.

  “What was in the story, exactly?” Bo asked.

  James shook his head. “I don’t want to give you too much detail. It might be dangerous.”

  “All the times we’ve talked on your porch, I never would have believed that you would buy into that kind of stuff.”

  “What do you mean?” James asked.

  “You seem very practical and no-nonsense. But here you are talking about cursed stories and such. It doesn’t fit.”

  “I am practical,” James said. “I believe what I’ve seen—no more, and no less.”

  “Huh,” Bo said.

  Bo picked up the remote control and flipped channels until he found another movie. He still got up and checked on Danielle, but his trips slowed to one or two during the course of the movie. He drank the rest of the pot of coffee. The cup he had poured for James went cold as it sat on the table.

  About an hour before dawn, Chloe woke up. She sniffed the air.

  “Is that coffee?”

  “It’s all gone,” Bo said.

  “Holy shit, what time is it?” she asked, pushing herself upright. She rubbed her eyes and craned her neck so she could see the clock. “Has she been writing all night?”

  “Constantly,” Bo said. “She slowed down, but yeah, she’s been writing this whole time.”

  “That’s incredible,” Chloe said. She got up and moved stiffly down the hall. Bo leaned over and watched as Chloe stood in Danielle’s doorway, poking only her head in the room. She came back and stood near the kitchen. “She seems okay, but she’s barely answering. It’s like she’s entranced by whatever she’s writing.”

  James grunted.

  Chloe hopped up and sat on the counter between the kitchen and living room. “Inspiration is a funny thing. When she goes without writing for a week, I get really worried. Danny gets backed up and she can’t seem to get her ideas flowing. Now, she’s been writing for hours, and I’m even more worried.”

  “It’s definitely unusual,” Bo said.

  “I’m sorry I made you take off work, just to sit around while she types.”

  “That’s okay,” Bo said.

  Chloe turned towards James. “How long do you think she’ll write?”

  It took James a second to realize that the question was aimed at him. He tore his eyes from the television and looked between Bo and Chloe. “Until dawn. Forty-eight minutes.”

  They didn’t talk much as the time counted down.

  Then, right on schedule, Danielle appeared in her doorway. She saw everyone in the living room and came down the hall. “I have to use the bathroom. I’ll be right in.”

  She was bathroom for a while. Chloe was hovering in the hall by the time Danielle came out.”

  “That was intense,” Danielle said as she flopped down on the couch. She wore a cautious smile and gingerly touched the side of her head, like there was a migraine brewing back there.

  “What happened? What were you writing?” Chloe asked.

  “It was the story,” Danielle said. “When I was at James’s house this morning—wait, yesterday morning, I guess—I read this story about this young man who has this…”

  “Wait,” James said, sitting up straight. “Please don’t tell them. We don’t know how much juice is left in the story.”

  Danielle studied James for a second, and then continued. “Anyway, I read that story. I didn’t think about it much all day—it was a good story, but not great—and then last night. Wow! It was all I could think about it. That’s why I went out with the bat. I had to see what it would feel like to be that guy. I wanted to just go feel the weight of it in my hand and feel that kind of righteous power. All those people are moving around, wasting their heartbeats on fruitless…”

  “Please,” James said.

  “Yeah, okay,” Danielle said. “Anyway, I felt driven to really understand the motivation. Then, when I sat down, I realized that I could understand it just as well if I wrote about it. I might have remembered a phrase here and there from your dad’s version, but I really made the story my own. I found some interesting symbolism in there, and I explored some themes. After a bit, I slowed down because I figured I didn’t want to get too wordy. I became very choosy with the way I told it.”

  “You scared the hell out of us,” Chloe said. “First when you attacked me, and then when you wouldn’t answer.”

  “I’m sorry,” Danielle said. “I guess I was captivated.”

  James nodded.

  “I’ve got to sleep,” Danielle said. “You guys must be exhausted. You look like you were up all night.”

  “No big deal,” Bo said. “Come on, James, let’s head back.”

  They both stood and began moving towards the door.

  Chloe gave them a wave and moved closer to Danielle to ask more questions.

  “Do you remember what happened on the stairs?”

  “Barely,” Danielle said. “Oh, shit, did I hit you? Oh, I’m so sorry.”

  “Don’t worry, it wasn’t bad. It was like it wasn’t even you inside your skin,” Chloe said.

  Bo opened the door and held it for James.

  “I know,” Danielle said. “I was watching the words spill out. I never write so easily. I can’t wait to see what my readers think of it.”

  James pushed by Bo and came back into the room. The women looked up at him.

  “What did you say?”

  Danielle held up her hands with a shrug.

  “What do you mean, your readers?”

  “My blog readers? I write a blog. I put short stories up there. Some of them are longer, like last night’s, but it’s a place where I don’t do a lot of editing or…”

  “You published the story?” James asked.

  “I don’t know if published is the right word for it,” she said. “I put it out there on my blog for my readers. I do a story or two a week out there. I’m trying to grow my readership for when I get a book done.”

  “Come on, James. It’s so late that it’s early,” Bo said.

  “You can’t do that. You have to get rid of it,” James said.

  “Is there some copyright to that story or something? You should know—I changed it significantly. I don’t think anyone would really recognize the original in there.”

  “No, listen to me. You have to get rid of it. Don’t let anyone read it.”

  Danielle looked at James for a second and then glanced between Bo and Chloe. She shrugged. “Okay, whatever.” She unfolded her legs and walked down the hall. “You can trust me when I say I didn’t plagiarize your dad.” She came back down the hall, holding her laptop. “I was definitely inspired by his story, but mine really was significantly different.” She set down the computer on the counter and worked for a second. “There you go. All done.”

  James exhaled.

  “Please delete it and never even think about it again,” James said.

  “I’ve taken it down,” Danielle said. “I think that’s enough.”

  “Please?”

  She rolled her eyes. “Fine. I had some good stuff in there though. I don’t think you realize how precious a whole night’s work is to me. I don’t have boxes of stories.”

  “Promise me.”

  “Fine. I promise I will delete it, and never let anyone read it, or even dare to think about it, ever again.”

  “Thank you,” James said.

  Bo followed him out.

  CHAPTER 17: DAY

  WHEN JAMES GOT HOME, he barely made it to his room before he fell asleep. Somehow, not writing all night was even more tiring than writing. All the times he had fantasized about taking a vacation from the stories, he never imagined that it would be even more stressful than his normal life.

  His dreams were strange, and came quickly.

  When he woke up, the last one was still etched in his bra
in.

  In the dream, he was sitting in the living room of his old house, drinking beers with his dad. They had a case-worth of cans lined up on the table between them, like a chess set. His father looked young and happy.

  “You should have a kid. Nothing in your life will compare to the feeling you’ll have for your kid,” his dream-father had said, tipping a can in James’s direction.

  “Come on,” dream-James had said. “You know it’s too late for that.”

  “Bullshit. Men have kids into their eighties, or nineties. You’re what, forty-five?”

  “Forty-three.”

  “What’s too late about that?”

  “I’d be sixty by the time he or she graduated from high school.”

  “So what? Sixty is nothing these days.”

  “Let’s not forget—I’m a prisoner to writing down these fucking stories of yours.”

  “Says who?”

  “Hmmm. Good question. I can write them down, or I can act them out. If I write them, I ruin my life. If I let myself act them out, then I murder a bunch more people, maybe burn some houses down, maybe kill some pets, and eventually wind up in jail. Either way, my life is ruined. But if I don’t write them down, I ruin the lives of scores of others as well.”

  “So kill yourself. That’s what I did. Works good.”

  “And someone else has to take my place,” dream-James said.

  Another voice made James turn to the side. It was his mother. “Your father’s right, James. You can’t be a prisoner to your work forever.”

  “It’s not my work!” James yelled. “It’s his work. I’m just doing it so nobody else has to die. Do you understand?”

  “People die,” she said.

  Yet another voice spoke up. Next to him, on the couch, James discovered his father’s best friend, Ron. “Everyone dies,” Ron said. “You can’t take the blame for death in the world. We’re all going to die.”

  “You’re being a little self-involved, if you think about it,” his father said. “Not everything is about you.”

  James covered his face with his hands. When he opened his eyes again, he half expected them all to be gone. Some deep part of his brain recognized that this wasn’t authentic reality. How could it be? He was talking to dead people.

  “You can only live your own life,” his mother said. “What other people do is completely up to them.”

  “Maybe you could set up a little incendiary bomb one morning and then get far, far away before it goes off. All those stories will be burned up, and you’ll be off the hook,” his father said.

  “You know what happens when the stories are burned,” James said. “I can’t risk that.”

  “The risk wouldn’t be to you,” Ron said.

  “I can’t live with that,” James said. “You know what I meant.”

  “You can’t live anyway,” his mother said. “If we’re being honest, what kind of life is this? Who’s it going to be, you, or people you’ve never met?”

  “Me,” James said. “I won’t inflict pain on all those people just because I’m too weak to bear it myself.”

  “You think you’re being noble,” Ron said. “But you’re merely accepting that suffering is inevitable. Is that the kind of world you want to live in?”

  “No!” James shouted. “No. Life doesn’t have to be fair, but what’s the point in having ethics if you don’t abide by them?”

  “Ah, but what if you’re the only person who’s real? You’re destroying the gift of your own life by improving thousands of imaginary ones.”

  “You’re the one who’s imaginary,” James said. “You’re just a dream.”

  He woke up with his dry mouth stuck shut and his body bathed in sweat.

  # # # # #

  James stayed out on the balcony until minutes before sunset. He hoped that Bo, or Danielle, or even Chloe might stop by. He wanted to apologize again. He hadn’t asked to get Danielle involved, but he still felt responsible that they’d all lost a night, and Danielle had wasted a night’s writing.

  The longer he waited out on the porch, the less sorry he felt. If he was going to be completely honest with himself, he also felt a little disappointed that nobody had acknowledged that he had gone out of his way to keep Danielle out of harm’s way. He could have let her attack innocent people, and nobody would have known to implicate him at all in the crime. Instead, he had risked everything to go stop her.

  James went inside when he heard his alarm.

  He sat down and wrote.

  CHAPTER 18: INTERRUPTION

  DAYS PASSED AND JAMES settled back into his routine. Winter was coming, and along with it, shorter days. He kept a mental count of how many days until December 21st. That was the shortest day of the year. After that day, everything would turn around and his nighttime isolation would grow shorter with each passing day.

  He cracked his knuckles and rose.

  James filed the story away and closed the lid on the box. He still hadn’t located plastic bins. The boxes were good enough. Spending extra just to clean up his living room would only deplete his cash faster. What was the point?

  He slapped together a peanut butter sandwich and ate it over the sink.

  James retired to his bedroom and left the blinds open. Sometimes it was nice to fall asleep as the sun was beginning to warm the fall skies.

  # # # # #

  He blinked.

  James looked at the clock. The alarm wouldn’t go off for hours and hours. He didn’t need to use the bathroom. He had no idea why he had woken up so suddenly.

  BANG. BANG. BANG.

  That was why he had awoken—someone was banging on the door. His mind shifted through a million scenarios in a second. Had he done something? Had there been a burglary? Fire?

  By the time he reached the hall, he was sure of what he would see. The police would be at his door. Somehow they had finally caught up with him about the couple in Pennsylvania. Wait—was it Pennsylvania, or West Virginia? How badly had his life turned out, that he couldn’t even remember where he had committed murder? James didn’t even bother to look through the peephole. He opened the door.

  Danielle was standing there.

  “Let me in,” she said, looking over her shoulder.

  “Hold on.”

  He shut the door and glanced around his dim living room. All the boxes were sealed. There was nothing she could accidentally read. He moved the chain and unlocked the door. She slipped inside.

  “Let’s go on the porch,” he said.

  “No. Let’s stay inside,” she said.

  He gestured her towards the counter, where there were stools. Aside from the chair behind his writing desk, that was the only place to sit in the room.

  She hovered near a stool, but didn’t alight.

  James sat and propped his head up with a hand.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked.

  “You haven’t seen the news?” she asked. She glanced towards the sliding door.

  “I’m not big on news.”

  “It’s everywhere. I can’t believe it. This is a nightmare. I just know they’re going to track me down at any minute. They’re reporting on hundreds of cases, but that might only be the tip of the iceberg. Who knows how many more haven’t been reported or tied back to the original.”

  “You’re going to have to explain what you’re talking about.”

  “The story, damn it. You know perfectly well what I’m talking about. It’s what you warned me about.”

  James was surprised to find that his heartbeat didn’t quicken, and his panic didn’t rise. After all this time, suddenly he was the calm one.

  He shook his head. “I don’t know what you think I warned you about. You wrote the story and deleted it.” He had a point, but suddenly it was lost. He looked around at the boxes of writing, and realized how stupid he had been. You couldn’t just delete the story—what if that was the same as burning it? If you burned the story, it took to the wind and spread the infection like sneez
ing in an airplane. Is that what had happened? Was that why she was so upset?

  “Yes, I deleted it, but I guess not fast enough. One of my readers must have grabbed it and reposted it. Hell, it could have even been more than one. They’re doing what I wrote in the story, James. They’re treating it like a fucking instruction manual. As soon as people figure out that I was the one who wrote it… I don’t know what they’re going to do to me. My career will be over, that’s for sure. But I don’t know if I can even live with it.”

  “What are they doing? Tell me.”

  She didn’t want to meet his eyes. In the low light that was seeping around the curtains of the sliding door, it was difficult to tell exactly what she was focused on.

  “They’re torturing people, just like I wrote,” she said. Danielle took a breath. Her voice started shaky, but she sped up as she talked. “In my version of your dad’s story, I decided that it needed more suspense and more gore. I had the same motivation. The character hates people who exercise because they’re wasting their energy instead of using it to help humanity. The character believes that it’s completely narcissistic to work out for your health, because you’re only prolonging a self-centered life. People need to expend their energy making the world a better place. He goes out to the bike path with a baseball bat and attacks anyone who’s exercising.”

  “I remember,” James said.

  “In my version, the guy inflicts compound fractures so he can immobilize the victims. He drags them off into the bushes and leaves them there to cry for help. When people pass, if they help, then he lets them all go. If they try to pass without helping—more selfishness—then he tortures them even more than the original victim. He winds up with a whole group of people as bait. They’re all groaning in the bushes.”

  “Could be worse,” James said, nodding.

  She stared at him for a second before she continued. “It’s horrible. The guy keeps going until he’s hunted down by an angry mob. That was his intent all along—to spur people into altruistic action. And people are doing it! It’s so terrible.”